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Hallucinations

Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people.

The Mind's Eye

An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

On the Move: A Life

From its opening minutes on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.

Awakenings

Awakenings - which inspired the major motion picture - is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and their extraordinary transformations.

An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and best-selling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals - also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the he chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.

Gratitude

No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.

Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf

In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.

How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond

Have you ever wondered how off-key you are while singing in the shower? Or if your Bob Dylan albums really sound better on vinyl? Or why certain songs make you cry? Now, scientist and musician John Powell invites you on an entertaining journey through the world of music. Discover what distinguishes music from plain old noise, how scales help you memorize songs, what the humble recorder teaches you about timbre (assuming your suffering listeners don’t break it first), and more.

The Practice of Practice: Get Better Faster

The focus of this book is music practice, but these techniques and mindsets can be applied to any skill you want to improve. The Practice of Practice covers essential practice strategies and mindsets you won't find in any other book. You'll learn what research tells us about practice, but more importantly, you'll learn how great musicians in many genres of music think about practice, and you'll learn the strategies and techniques they use to improve.

Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior

Every day of your life is spent surrounded by mysteries that involve what appear to be rather ordinary human behaviors. What makes you happy? Where did your personality come from? Why do you have trouble controlling certain behaviors? Why do you behave differently as an adult than you did as an adolescent?Since the start of recorded history, and probably even before, people have been interested in answering questions about why we behave the way we do.

How Music Works

Best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the iconic band Talking Heads, David Byrne has received Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the insightful How Music Works, Byrne offers his unique perspective on music - including how music is shaped by time, how recording technologies transform the listening experience, the evolution of the industry, and much more.

The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music

"'Boy, do I have a lot to learn!'" Anyone who's ever picked up a musical instrument of any kind - from the first caveman banging rocks to that little kid at the guitar shop - has thought that. I know I did. I'd been trying for years to break in to the music scene, to show everyone my chops, to make my mark. And I was good. But I wasn't great. I knew that there was something wrong. Then the teacher showed up...."

A Leg to Stand On

Dr. Oliver Sacks's books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars and the best-selling The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat have been acclaimed for their compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders. In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey.

Music as a Mirror of History

In Music as a Mirror of History, Great Courses favorite Professor Greenberg of San Francisco Performances returns with a fascinating and provocative premise: Despite the abstractness and the universality of music - and our habit of listening to it divorced from any historical context - music is a mirror of the historical setting in which it was created. Music carries a rich spectrum of social, cultural, historical, and philosophical information, all grounded in the life and experience of the composer.

Oaxaca Journal

Oliver Sacks is well known as an explorer of the human mind - a neurologist with a gift for complex, insightful portrayals of people and their conditions. However, he is also a card-carrying member of the American Fern Society, and since childhood has been fascinated by these primitive plants and their ability to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is Sacks' spellbinding account of his trip with a group of fellow fern enthusiasts to the beautiful, history-steeped province of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning

Just about every human being knows how to listen to music, but what does it take to make music? Is musicality something we are born with? Or a skill that anyone can develop at any time? If you don't start piano at the age of six, is there any hope? Is skill learning best left to children or can anyone reinvent him-or herself at any time?

Publisher's Summary

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.

Oliver Sacks' compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people. He explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day.

Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson's disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer's or amnesia.

Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

What the Critics Say

"[Sacks'] customary erudition and fellow-feeling ensure that, no matter how clinical the discussion becomes, it remains, like the music of Mozart, accessible and congenial." (Booklist)
"Sacks is an unparalleled chronicler of modern medicine, and fans of his work will find much to enjoy when he turns his prodigious talent for observation to music and its relationship to the brain." (Publishers Weekly)

This book is a must for all music lovers. Readers of Sacks' previous works will recognize his wonderful style that has managed to popularize neurology. This book covers both normal and pathological reactions to music.

My only grumble is that he provides far too many examples of musical hallucinations which caused the book to drag a little. The other topics (and there are many of them) are covered in just the right detail.

is when he removes himself (and his ego) from the narratives and simply brings neurological science to the laymen in clear, easy-to-understand terms and still does not dumb things down or oversimplify. This book is the best of Sacks. He explores all the things that can go right, and wrong, in the brain in regard to music, demonstrating that there are numerous areas of the brain dedicated to understanding and processing music, and thus, I believe, shows Pinker to be wrong when he said, "music is simply 'cheesecake for the brain' and has no evolutionary value..." He does this latter best when he demonstrates the direct link between language and music and how one probably evolved from the other--that is, that music serves as a very real form of communication, even without words.

Olivier Sacks, professor of neurology and psychiatry, the author of famous book "The Man who mistook His Wife for a Hat" wrote another incredible tractate. Musicophilia is the book that should shake our views about musical perception and the role of music for the understanding of human mind.

The book is written in the form of reports and accounts and conclusions about cases of severe mental illnesses and their relation to music or musical perception.

He analyses many forms of strange mental behaviour, from certain types of seizures that can be called "musical seizures", musical hallucinations through haunting musical "brainworms" to deep analysis of relation between music and blindness, musical savantisms or Williams syndrome.

Olivier Sacks does not attempt to paint the big picture of relation between music and brain. He is modest and shows a lot of moderation and scientific discipline when it comes to interpretation of these facts.

However, we, his readers could indulge in comments, conclusions and judgments. One conclusions is almost certain - the musicality - the perception of music can not be reduced to the quality of hearing or simple audition. There are indirect proofs that music is much more deeply rooted in our brains - in the biological and physical foundations of our minds. As he writes: "There are undoubtedly particular areas of the cortex subserving musical intelligence and sensibility (...) The emotional response to the music it would seem is widespread and probably not only cortical but subcortical..."

After reading this book there is no doubt the music is much more important and more fundamental to our life than we ever expected.

Some of us had already knew that, other had some vague gut feeling of this truth - but Sacks shows how deeply true are all these hunches...

I'm already a big fan of his take on the world, so accepted the following two issues you might need to be aware of: 1)There are occasional repetitions. 2)The scientific citations, easy to gloss over while reading a paper page, aren't served that well by the listen-only format--not that gripping... But what interesting material!! The style is overwhelmingly anecdotal,so it's not that challenging to follow. He explores the interplay of brain anatomy/function and the musical ability or appreciation--how they influence each other.His fondness for the people whose stories he tells is clear. The narrator is quite good, I thought.

Even my fiction only friends found this book fascinating. I've actually listened to this book several times I found it so captivating. I had no trouble with the reader and Sacks deals with far more than tinnitus, all sorts of fascinating disorders and just what music means to we humans. I can't think of one flaw to this book except that it ends. Highly recommended!

Well, entertainment is only one of many reasons to get this book. I have been sharing the inspirational and just flat-out amazing stories with friends, colleagues, students and family. Sacks is a good writer who does not overwhelm or, at the other end, trivialize his material. Also, the reader of this book has a fantastic voice, rich and well-modulated. You will be well-rewarded with this book.

extremely interesting, some of it almost unbelievable. makes one rethink what music is all about and how humane a quality it is.
the missing star of my rating is due to the annoying mentioning throughout the book of other books by Mr. Sacks. after a while this becomes too much of an annoying sales pitch. a regular bookmarked bibliographical list should have been enough.
the narration gets a 4 star too. it's very OK but not outstanding.

I've been an Oliver Sacks fan for a long time, and this latest work is as good as the rest. I've been inspired to train myself to develop absolute pitch. There are parts of the book that are very technical, and develop as text for medical journals. But, as usual, his science is balanced with great humanity.

The book is basically a compendium of case studies of various people and patients with interesting music-related disorders and/or abilities, with Oliver Sacks's commentary sprinkled in, but it's written with a narrative trail connecting the stories, so it's easy to follow, and it is densely packed with interesting neurological science tidbits to keep any layman with the faintest interest in neurology happy.

John Lee's performance also did not disappoint. I did not notice any irregularities in the recording, and Lee's voice is very pleasant to listen to.

I would highly recommend this audiobook to anyone with an interest in music or neurology.

It provides tons of anecdotal evidence that music is innate human nature.

Any additional comments?

I heard this book after Steven Pinker's "Blank Slate", so I expected a similar style of "theory, anecdotal evidence, scientific explanation". Musicophilia provides "theory, anecdotal evidence, little or no explanation". Despite this perceived shortfall, I'm glad that I listened to it. Dr. Sacks has broadened and deepened my appreciation for music, and added perspective to my self--perception. I love to listen to a great variety of music genres, but I'm not able to sing or play instruments very well. After his book, I no longer feel insecure about it.